PROFES'SION, noun [Latin professio.]

1. Open declaration; public avowal or acknowledgment of one's sentiments or belief; as professions of friendship or sincerity; a profession of faith or religion.

The professions of princes, when a crown is the bait, are a slender security.

The Indians quickly perceive the coincidence or the contradiction between professions and conduct, and their confidence or distrust follows of course.

2. The business which one professes to understand and to follow for subsistence; calling; vocation; employment; as the learned professions. We speak of the profession of a clergyman, of a lawyer, and of a physician or surgeon; the profession of lecturer on chimistry or mineralogy. But the word is not applied to an occupation merely mechanical.

3. The collective body of persons engaged in a calling. We speak of practices honorable or disgraceful to a profession

4. Among the Romanists, the entering into a religious order, by which a person offers himself to God by a vow of inviolable obedience, chastity and poverty.